That evening she did no more than prowl around the environs of the hotel and station, dropping into a little restaurant for pasta and then swordfish. She read the Terry Pratchett she had brought with her. It would be ostentatious to read about the shroud in Turin itself.
The next day she really set out to explore the city. She walked and walked, her eyes darting everywhere as she fluttered from wide street into spacious square.
Eventually, she knew, she would go and see the shroud. The real thing was on exhibition for millennium year. Normally only a copy was shown, even to the faithful. But the shroud could wait. She skirted the great squares of the old Piedmontese capital, sometimes glancing at the expensive shops, but usually trailing her eyes restlessly from face to face, from besuited business executives to overalled plumbers and builders, from waiters and bus-drivers to tourists in shorts and loud shirts. After an hour or more she sat down at a table in an outdoor cafe on the Piazza Castello.
‘Una spremuta d’arancia, per favore,’ she told the waiter, after subjecting him to a prolonged but unsatisfactory scrutiny.
Restlessly she resumed her inspection of the townsmen from afar. Absentmindedly she stirred sugar into her spremuta. Tasted it – delicious. She sat back in her chair.
Then suddenly she saw him. She would have said to the end of her life, if she had lived long, that an emanation from him came across the huge square from towards the royal palace at the far side and seized her. Perhaps the truth was that he was standing in the middle, and matched from afar the specifications of what she was seeking. Tall, bearded – and even from a distance, she felt sure, magnetic. She slapped notes down on the table and left the cafe, crossing the road, then moved into the main body of the Piazza Castello. Now she could see him from a distance of twenty yards or so, still looking in her direction. Suddenly he turned and walked in the direction of the royal palace. There was no question what Violetta would do. She had already marked it down as one of her sort of places. Now it moved to being a top priority.
She strode ahead, almost running in her eagerness not to lose sight of him – past tourists feeding the birds, past a news stand with a placard reading:
ANCORA UNA DONNA UCCISA.
She gained the entrance to the palace and saw him coming out of the ticket-office-cum-bookshop. Breathless by now, she ran in and again slapped money down. The woman behind the grille told her that a tour started in five minutes. Trying to get her breath back, she stood for a moment outside, under the dark arches that bordered the central courtyard. There was a little knot of people to her left, and cautiously she went over and mingled with them. Almost all seemed to be tourists. But there, among them, he was: tall, solidly built, with the bushy beard and long hair of the shroud giving him the air of a young patriarch. He was half turned away from her, so she could not see his eyes. Then a small woman came along to herd them together, apologising for her poor English, but explaining that in every room there was a notice in three languages explaining the room’s contents and purpose. Violetta wondered whether the Man of the Shroud spoke English.
Once they got past the magnificent staircase it was easy to keep close to him. Sometimes she darted up to the notices and ostentatiously read the English text. It was in the third room, the Queen’s Reception Room, that he came up behind her and spoke to her.
‘You like palaces and such things?’
His voice was soft but urgent, his English heavily accented but seductive. Seductive on a high intellectual and spiritual plane, Violetta decided.
‘Very much,’ she answered, smiling up at him. Now she could see his eyes, which had a piercing intensity. ‘This one is very fine, if maybe a little musty.’
‘Musty? What is musty. You hexplain?’
‘Musty – well it’s old, a bit shabby, decaying a little.’
‘Ah, I understand. But it is old. Nothing ’as been done to it for years. The kings of Savoy, they became kings of Hitaly, then kings of nowhere at all. You see?’
‘Very well. You speak beautiful English.’
‘Not at all. I need a good teacher. So you see, no one ’as lived ’ere for years, for a century and a ’alf. So it become a bit musty, like you say. But full of ’istory.’
‘Yes, it’s certainly that. Was this king who became King of Italy the one called Victor Emmanuel, or was that later?’
‘Italy have two kings called Vittorio Emanuelle, two called Umberto. The wife of the first King Umberto, Queen Margherita, she ’ave a pizza named after her.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘The second Umberto, ’e die in exile, and ’e give the shroud to the Cathedral.’
‘Really? The shroud! … Has anyone ever told you that you look like the man in the shroud?’
The man – still she did not know his name – shrugged. ‘Some.’
‘Plenty of women I should think.’
‘Some. Men and women.’ He said it distinctly, as if offended.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest you were a ladykiller.’
She did not notice his faint start.
‘What is that – a lady-what?’
‘Ladykiller. It’s another word for a Don Juan or a Casanova.’
‘Ah – a Casanova. Maybe all Italian men have a little bit of a Casanova in them.’
‘Maybe they do … Do you live in Turin?’
‘Yes – I have a little flat.’
She nearly asked him what a native of Turin was doing going on a conducted tour of one of its monuments with a party of tourists, but she bit the question back.
‘It must be a wonderful city to live in.’
‘It is very hexciting. It suits me. I live my life fully and eagerly.’
‘I’m sure you do!’ She said it not flirtatiously but seriously. ‘I felt that, too, about the man in the shroud.’
‘You did?’
‘Scientists who have carbon-dated it say it’s not two thousand years old, just six hundred or so. I had the idea, the image of a man of the middle ages or the Renaissance who had lived life to the full, with such energy, such zest … Eagerly, like you said.’
‘Maybe you are right. Maybe he was my many-greats grandfather.’
They looked at each other and laughed. If she had not been under the spell of the shroud she might have seen that his eyes were cold, that they belied his laugh.
The tour of the royal apartments was coming to an end. They emerged into the courtyard of the palace, then through an arch back to the Piazza Castello. Violetta could see her man for the first time in the sunlight. How strong the mouth was, how bright the eyes! He was even more exciting than she had thought.
‘I’ve been so glad of your company. Could I buy you coffee? Or lunch – it’s not far off lunchtime.’
‘Alas – I have to go back to my flat, my studio. I am a poor artist. I must get images from the palace into my sketchbook – mere stuff for the tourist trade, you understand, but my living. This hevening. What about dinner this hevening?’
‘What a good idea!’ said Violetta, at last giving way to her girlish flirtatiousness. ‘Why don’t you come to my hotel? I believe the Grand’s dining room is excellent. Or we could go out to a restaurant.’
The man shook his head.
‘I am not a person to call at a respectable hotel. I would not compromise a fine lady like yourself – me a poor, dirty artist. You come to my flat. I cook you a fine meal, authentic, something handed down in my family for generations.’
‘How exciting!’
‘I promise you, exciting! Here is my card. You come at eight?’
‘Eight o’clock,’ she said, looking at the card. ‘Mario Pertusi.’
‘But you can call me Casanova. The ladykiller.’
They both laughed again. She wished she could kiss him her arrivederci, but she just said it and raised her hand, walking away across the square, past the news stand with its shrieking headline, past the cafes and the banks and the tourist office. Before plunging into the small st
reets leading to the cathedral she looked round, but her poor eyesight did not allow her to see Mario Pertusi still watching her from the entrance to the Palazzo Madama, his eyes cold and searing, his thin-lipped mouth open in anticipation.
And while Pertusi went back to his studio flat, with its crude drawings of women in notebook after notebook, its worse than amateur attempts at oil-paintings of screaming red mouths, bulging eyes, slashed breasts, which he now turned with practised hand to the wall, Violetta went to the cathedral and the queue to see the shroud, under skies that were clouding over fast. She was told that you had to buy a ticket to see it, and that the ticket office (of course) was elsewhere, back in the Piazza Castello. When she had bought it and taken it back to the cathedral she was told that the ticket was for admittance at a certain time – at seven o’clock that evening, in fact.
‘Are you trying to keep the damned thing secret?’ she yelled at the scandalised priest on the door, then turned and ran out into the heavy rain which had now been pouring for five minutes. She looked around at the sodden nuns, at the priests with little groups from their villages, the women’s groups that bore an awful resemblance to British Women’s Institutes. She screwed up her ticket and dropped it on the cathedral steps.
‘I don’t need to see him,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen him.’
She made her way, absurdly happy and at peace, back to the Grand Hotel. She didn’t need lunch – couldn’t face anything so mundane. In her room she bathed, then lay on her bed dreaming, seeing him – the all-forgiving eyes, the air of vast and varied experience, the presence of a man who took on his shoulders the whole burden of sinning humanity.
Soon she sank into a light doze. Then she got up, put on her best and silkiest underclothes, her smartest dress. She emptied her bag to find his card and looked at his address. That was easy enough: a tiny street off the Via dell’Accademia. She could hardly wait, but forced herself to. To drink whisky would be like some kind of profanation. She must have all her senses alert, alive. At last it was time. She skirted the Piazza Carlo Felice till she found the Street of the Academy. At last she found Mario’s little road, and number 12. It was an old house, shabby, dirtied by a million Fiats, by the dust and grime of passing humanity. There were no bells on the outside, but plenty of light inside. He had put them on for her. Third floor it had said on the card. She went inside and walked up the stairs, hardly able to contain her excitement. There were two flats on the third floor, one seemingly empty. On the other was the name: MARIO PERTUSI. She waited for one delicious moment.
Then she rang the bell to begin her assignation with her shroud.
LOVELY REQUIEM, MR MOZART
Mr Mozart, who appeared in two of my ‘Bernard Bastable’ books, is a historical figure, but one of the ‘what if’ variety. He is an answer to the question, ‘What if Mozart had stayed in Britain after his 1764 visit?’ My answer was that he would have been reduced to musical hackwork, writing pap music for pantomimes and vaudevilles, and being patronised by royalty and bigwigs. In the second of the books, when Mozart was in his 70s, he formed a friendship with the young Princess Victoria in whom he was trying to discover some musical talents. Things seemed to be looking up …
The commission came into my life accompanied by Mr Lewis Cazalet. The arrival of that gentleman was announced by Jeannie, my unusually bright and alert maid of all duties.
‘There’s a wee mannikin to see you. Says he has a proposal, something to your advantage.’
I did not jump up with the alacrity I would once have shown. My position as piano teacher to the Princess Victoria brought me, as well as great pleasure, none of it musical, a great number of prestigious pupils. I stirred reluctantly in my chair, only to have Jeannie say: ‘Don’t hurry. Let the body wait.’
I nodded, and went to the piano and played a showy piece by my friend Clementi, sufficiently forte to penetrate walls. Jeannie came in as I was finishing.
‘He’s walking up and down. He’s a mite … unappetising.’
I raised my eyebrows, but I relied on Jeannie’s judgement, and told her to show him in.
The gentleman whom she ushered in was not short, but there was a sort of insubstantiality about him: he was thin to the point of meagreness, his gestures were fluttery, and his face was the colour of putty.
‘Mr Mozart?’ he said, taking my hand limply. ‘A great honour. I recognised one of your sonatas, did I not? Your fame is gone out to all lands.’
I was not well disposed towards anyone who could confuse a piece by Clementi with one of my sonatas.
‘Mr … er?’
‘Cazalet, Lewis Cazalet.’
‘Ah – a French name,’ I said unenthusiastically. That nation had virtually cut the continent of Europe off for twenty years, the very years of my prime, when I could have earned a fortune.
‘We are a Huguenot family,’ he murmured, as if that was a guarantee of virtue and probity.
‘Well, let’s get down to business. I believe you have a proposition for me.’ We sat down and I looked enquiringly at him.
‘Perhaps as a preliminary’ – No please! Spare me the preliminaries! – ‘I should say that I am a man of letters, but not one favoured by fame and fortune like yourself.’ Did my sitting room look as if I was favoured by fortune? ‘As a consequence I have been for the last five years librarian and secretary to Mr Isaac Pickles. You know the name?’
I prevaricated.
‘I believe I have heard the name mentioned by my son in Wakefield.’
‘You would have. A great name in the north. Immensely wealthy. Mr Pickles – his father was Pighills, but no matter – is one of the foremost mill-owners in the Bradford district. He is, in newspaper parlance, a Prince of Industry.’
‘I see,’ I said. And I did. A loud vulgarian with pots of money and a power lust.
‘A most considerate employer, and generous to boot on occasion. I have no complaints whatsoever.’
‘That’s good to hear. In sending you to see me this, er, Pickles has some end in view, I take it?’
Mr Cazalet hummed and hawed. Then he suddenly blurted out:
‘A requiem. He wishes you to write a requiem.’
‘Ah. I take it you mean a requiem mass. Is Mr Pickles a Catholic?’
‘He is not. His religion is taken from many and is his own alone.’
‘And the person for whom this requiem is to be written?’
‘Is immaterial.’
‘I assure you it is not. If it is for His late Majesty King George IV it would be very different to what I would write if it was for the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example.’
‘I would imagine so!’ He hummed again, let out something like a whimper, then said: ‘It is a requiem for his wife.’
‘I see. Mr Pickles was a devoted husband I take it?’
‘Mr Pickles is the complete family man – affectionate, but wise … I must insist, however, that the information I have just given you remain completely confidential. Com-plete-ly.’
‘It will. But there must surely be a reason for this request?’
He looked at me piteously but I held his gaze.
‘The lady in question is still alive.’
I sat back in my chair and simply said ‘Phew.’
In the next few minutes he confided in me the facts of the case. The wife in question was sick, sicker than she herself recognised, the doctor was certain her illness was terminal, but would not commit himself to a likely date. All the uncertainties of the commission would be reflected in the fee, and there was one further condition that Mr Pickles absolutely insisted upon:
‘That is that you tell no one of this commission, tell no one that you are writing a requiem, tell no one when it is performed that you wrote it, and give total and absolute rights in the work to Mr Pickles, along with all manuscript writings.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘And the fee he suggests that he pay me?’
‘The fee he is willing to pay you is fifteen hundred pounds.’
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Fifteen hundred! Riches! Good dinners, fine silk clothes, rich presents for my children and grandchildren. Oh wondrous Pickles!
‘Say two thousand,’ I said, ‘and I am Mr Pickles’s to command.’
I was not deceived by the conditions. Mr Pickles was an amateur musician who wanted to pass my work off as his own. When his wife died he wanted to impose on the world by pretending that the superb requiem that was performed for her was written by his good self, divinely inspired (rather as that arch imposter Samuel Taylor Coleridge tries to pretend that his poems were in fact written by the Almighty, with himself acting merely as amanuensis). And it would all be in vain: every society person with any musical knowledge would know it was not by him, and anyone of real discernment would guess it was by Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart.
The only fly in the ointment was spelt out for me by the Princess Victoria at her next weekly piano lesson, where she murdered the works of lesser men than I (I had learnt the lesson of not encouraging her to her painful operations on works of my own). When she had screwed out of me the reasons for my lightness of heart (unusual, even with her delightful presence) she said:
‘He seems a very dishonest man, Mr Mozart.’
‘Distinctly devious, my dear.’
‘Devious! What a lovely word. If he can rob you of credit for the music, he can hardly be trusted to pay you for it.’
It was something I resolved to bear in mind.
* * *
From the start Mr Pickles showed he had learnt lessons from the negotiations of Mr Cazalet.
‘The fee I’m offering,’ he said to me in his Hyde Park mansion, ‘is two thousand pounds. Subject, naturally, to some safeguards.’
Two thousand pounds, as asked for! I wouldn’t like to say how long it would take me to earn that amount by more legitimate pursuits. Kensington Palace paid me thirteen and sixpence an hour for my lessons with the princess. We were sitting on a superb sofa, which must have been in Mr Pickles’s family since the time he started to make a fortune from his niche in the cotton industry, which was warm underwear. I could have done with a pair of his long combinations now: this luxurious sofa was about half a mile from the nearest of two fires in the high-ceilinged drawing room of his mansion. I got up and strolled over to his fine grand piano, much nearer the fire. I played a few notes.
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